Patient 001 is a 2019 thriller about a devoted wife who is devastated when her beloved husband falls into a coma after a terrible accident and makes a devastating choice in having a baby.
Cloning is a weird and fascinating bit of reality that we as a species are still wrangling with ethically and scientifically, and while the matters at hand are being juggled by those in the know, the movies have long taken to the possibilities with aplomb, from comedy to horror and everything in-between. The latest into the fold is Katie Fleischer‘s oddball independent release Patient 001, a kooky little fairy tale that plays with the science of course, ditching logic for fantasy, but manages to do so with a few clever twists and surreal imagery.
Josie Kingman (Rosie Fellner) is a young wife in a bit of a tight fix. She wants a baby, as most women in her position do, and is certainly ready to deliver, so to speak. However, there is a problem. Her husband Leo (Michael Hayden) is in a coma, suffered after a terrible accident. What’s she do? She has sex with his body but to no avail, she emotionally strung out on a future without a family. Then along comes Dr. Jameson (Michel Gill) with a controversial and experimental solution: cloning. In secret, the two gather Leo’s DNA and manage to get her pregnant. She gives birth and amazingly, Leo awakens not long after. But … there is a wrinkle. Since the baby and Leo share DNA, they can’t be near each other, the infant’s presence turning Leo into a basketcase of pain and anger, cursed by harrowing visions. The two come upon a troubling way to solve their ordeal, but two decades later, a price has come back to collect.
Let’s not quibble. Patient 001 is silly. It abandons any sense of reality almost immediately after the baby is conceived, steering hard left into lunacy for the sake of histrionics, the idea that DNA houses a singular ‘soul’ that can’t be shared, at least with any kind of peaceful cohesion central to the suspension of belief. Admittedly, it’s a clever idea for a bit of psychological mayhem, and one can’t accuse Fleischer (and co-writer Jason Dietz) of going half way. This is sheer madness.
It’s not much of a spoiler to say where the story goes, the trailer outright making it clear what’s happened, but I’ll skip the temptation to say more, simply hinting that the agony both Leo and Josie experience in the weeks alone with their new baby lead to something akin to Oswald Cobblepot in Tim Burton‘s Batman Returns. It splits the movie cleanly into two distinct parts and though neither really strike with the impact probably intended, it is not without its curiosity.
Fleischer is balancing all this on a very tricky edge, the plot outrageous enough to be amusingly entertaining but the tone deadly serious, even when it feels like it shouldn’t be. The arrival of the film’s third main character (Noah Fleiss) begins a new chapter of crazy, where physical attractions cause some rifts and DNA comes back into play. It’s all sort of cheesy and awkward but in such purposeful practice that it’s hard not to appreciate the attempt.
Patient 001 is a strange mix of honestly good moments but many more that are increasingly bizarre. It’s so unconventional you have to wonder if this is by design or accident, the choppy editing, fairytale symbolism, odd character behaviors, wooden acting … what’s going on? You’ll ask yourself that time and time again. It earns an extra star just for sheer bravado.